Save For Three
by Tonzura123
Summary: "One memory, one glimmer of each of them for her life in the Shadowlands." A companion fic containing the origins of the three items Susan takes with her to America. P.E-verse.
1. Item One: A Drawing

**SAVE FOR THREE**

**By Tonzura123**

**Item One: A Drawing**

**Disclaimer: I own the drawing, but that's about it.**

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><p><em>Uphold me according to Your word, that I may live, and let me not be ashamed of my hope," Psalm 119:116<em>

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><p>When Lucy made the picture for Edmund, just before he left with Peter for Hartbee's School for Young Men, she had known that Susan was floating beyond her shoulder. In fact, the older girl had been doing so with affected nonchalance for a good ten minutes. Lucy was too thrilled by the strange surge of attention to question her sister on it.<p>

She lifted her brush, pressing gently on the paper as she dragged it down, streaking black water and dripping into the shadows of the corner. It was a piece that screamed of the macabre- a shadowed, icy blue and dooming black cave. A wretched figure contorted on the ground, a broken hand reaching into light- the only light- for a small yellow celandine. In its rougher stage, the painting was still mostly a pencil sketch, making the gaunt figure all the more appalling as she carefully shaded it in with browns and greys. Wind picked up behind Lucy, blowing strands of hair into her face and threatening to bubble the paint as it dried.

"Beautiful day," Lucy grinned, tucking her hair back again and pinning her painting down with both hands before a gust blew it away.

"There are other places you could paint, Lucy dear," Susan suggested, frowning as a single hair escaped the grid-locked fortress that she had fashioned on top of her own head, "Less wild places."

"There are," Lucy agreed, "But I'd hardly want to paint there."

"Is that a left hand or a right hand?" Susan wondered, leaning over Lucy's shoulder to peer at the mangled limb emerging from the paper.

Lucy looked at it, too. She couldn't really tell.

"I can't really tell," she admitted, "Perhaps they've had it broken too many times."

"Lucy, that's _dreadful_."

The winds howled again, tugging at the paper like they wanted to snatch it away and look for themselves. Susan actually stumbled under the strength of invisible force, knocking Lucy's hand as she brought a dark grey onto the page- it jerked the paint in a crooked line, streaking a demonic smog across the figure's face.

"Oh!" said Lucy, hands fluttering over the smear, wondering if there was any way to remove it before it dried, but that momentary hesistation was enough for the winds, which carried the excess grey in paralleling streaks towards the northeast. Lucy stared.

"I'm sorry, Lu," Susan said contritely, "Maybe if we-?"

"It's fine," Lucy interrupted her. She knew she couldn't blame Susan, after all, but she still felt a little sore about the whole thing. "I'm sure Edmund will love it anyway."

Her older sister wrinkled her nose, "He likes violence a little too much."

"He's a boy." _And a knight at that_, Lucy's mind added, but she was careful not to mention it to Susan again.

"Well, you know," Susan began, sounding a little unsure, "If you were to brush that line there in tight little circles, and then brush at the bottom one up, it would almost look like-"

Lucy looked where Susan was pointing and squinted. She still didn't see it. "Look like what, Susan?"

"Here, may I?" asked Susan, holding out her hand. Lucy glanced between her sister and the painting, hesitating.

"Of course, it's a rather silly idea anyways," Susan finished, retracting her hand again and stepping away. "It's your painting after all."

"No- No." Lucy stood, pushed the brush into Susan's elegant hand, and guided her to the little stool that Lucy had been perched on. "Try it. I trust you."

Gingerly, Susan sat, correcting her feet in a proper way beneath the stool, her deft hands pinning the paper down, her left hand reaching with the brush into the same dark grey and then, on it's edge, adding a slight white. Lucy wanted to ask what Susan was doing, but had already said that she trusted her, and was still glowing with the way Susan had smiled at her for that, so she only watched.

And was amazed.

"Why, Susan, that looks brilliant!' Lucy gasped. "Just like stone! It might come off of the page!"

"It needs more definition," was all Susan said, clearly elsewhere in her mind.

Lucy stood behind her shoulder for many minutes as that elegant white hand drew colors across the paper, dabbing shadows where Lucy never would have thought to put them. The streaks that the wind had made quickly morphed into lighter rays of sunlight. The celandine glowed. The mangled figure seemed to grow desperate and needy, not just deformed. It was still Lucy's painting, but Susan had done something to it. It was animated now, and so was Susan.

Her legs, which had been tightly crossed under the stool, were now parted, planted, pushing her face closer to the page like a fighter's stance, a greyish blue was smudged under her jaw and a yellow beneath her eye like warpaint. She had pulled down her hair, loose curls waving down her back and leaping in the winds. A light had entered her eyes, brought her face to glow, red in her cheeks, intensity like a Queen commanding the painting to do her bidding. Lucy was entranced by her.

"Oh, Susan!"

Lucy turned to find a handsome young man running lightly up the hill. He was very fashionably dressed, with a sharp nose and bright green eyes. Lucy disliked him on the spot.

Susan, startling at the sound of her name, jumped up from the stool and immediately began righting herself, putting a bright, unanimated, smile onto her mouth.

"Calvin!" she exclaimed, "Have you run all this way?" He finally reached them, taking Susan's painted hands and smiling. Lucy noticed that he was very careful not to let the paint on Susan's white hands transition onto his white gloves.

"I wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten our plans for the day. It's nearly four o'clock. I have the reservations all prepared for dinner tonight."

Susan collected herself, "Dinner! Why, of course I haven't forgotten. I was just spending a little time with my younger sister."

"Your only sister," Lucy added, with her best court smile painted on.

Calvin only then seemed to realize Lucy was there. "Oh, hello."

"A pleasure meeting you, Calvin," Lucy insisted, "I'm Lucy Pevensie." She did not offer her hand, and Calvin did not offer his.

"Charmed." He turned back to Susan, laughing lightly. "But what have you got on your face? And your hair looks like it's been put through a tempest!"

Susan gently scrubbed at her face, embarrased.

"She was painting," Lucy said. "She's fantastic."

"A landscape?" Calvin smiled. Susan blushed.

"A sentiment," Susan corrected politely. "I was just helping Lucy a little."

"Well, let's see," Calvin peered around Susan and immediately blanched. Lucy had to give him credit for such a quick recovery time. "That's quite... tragedian. A little Monet influence. Very- Accurate depiction."

Susan was very red, and Lucy felt a little bad for it.

"It's just a silly painting," Susan said. "It's for our brother. He's going away to school this fall. He got a scholarship to Hartbee's School for Young Men. It's a very large ordeal and I just thought I'd help out, a little."

"No need to explain yourself," Calvin said grandly. "Boys love violence, you know."

"You don't seem to," Lucy offered innocently.

"Yes, well, I'm hardly a boy, am I?" Calvin replied, "I'm at University in Cambridge. Third year."

Lucy didn't know which was worse, the fact that her sixteen year old sister was courting a twenty-one year old dandy, or the fact that her thirty-one year old Queen was courting a twenty-one year old dandy. Neither option seemed very appealing to her.

"I think I'll just pack up and go home for the day." Lucy went to collect her little stool, placing the dried painting inside of her portfolio, in a separate pocket from her capped paints and brushes. "It was lovely meeting you, Calvin. Have a wonderful time tonight."

She turned to go, but was caught by a pair of elegant hands that were surprisingly strong when they tugged her against the soft form of her sister. Susan's painted hands stuck a little against Lucy's hair, and Susan's hair tickled Lucy's nose, but for the most part, Lucy glowed under the soft kiss that Susan hid in one of Lucy's dimples, and wrapped her arms around Susan's small waist.

"I had a nice time, today, Lu," Susan murmured to her.

Lucy nodded against Susan's chest. "Me, too, Susan."

Lucy walked home that evening as if in a dream, filled with a nostalgic happiness. The first thing she did when she entered the front door was to kick off her shoes and run up into the room that she and her sister shared, taking out a brush to paint the title across the back of the picture that Susan had brought to life:

_Hope Grows_

And she signed her name in Medieval font across the bottom.

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><p>AN: This story is all about the three items that Susan takes with her to America after chapter thirty of P.E- A drawing, a handwritten book, and a three-legged kitten named Wisp.

Next is "A Hand-Written Book." Sadly, this one doesn't start with Peter, but picks up on the boat to America. The final chapter is "A Three-Legged Kitten," in which Edmund is in a spot of trouble.

Just a head's up- "Calvin" is Latin for "Hairless." My little brother got me a baby name book for X-mas. ;D

Happy Holidays!

As Always,

-Tonzura123


	2. Item Two: A Handwritten Book

**SAVE FOR THREE**

**By Tonzura123**

**Item Two: A Handwritten Book**

**Disclaimer: I don't want to risk the lawsuit... My college loans couldn't afford it.**

**A/N: I use the word **_**romantic**_** in this chapter, not to invoke the emotion of love or infatuation or little cupid arrows, but the era of writing, the dreamer, and the Romance languages from Rome (i.e **_**Latin**_**). I use the world **_**love**_** in a way that can either give platonic relations to family and friend alike, or extend a special relationship towards the friend.**

**Hans-Georg Lundahl: If you go back and read the author's note at the end of the first chapter, you can see what the other two items are. Remember, these are based off of the items from the last chapter of P.E.**

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><p><em>Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope," I Thessalonians 4:13<em>

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><p>"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. "<p>

-C.S Lewis, _A Grief Observed_

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><p>The handwriting is distinctly Narnian, actually.<p>

Mrs. Keats, a Finchley neighbour, did not recognize the style. She pegged it as a sloppy, romantic sort of scribble. Her powdered hands in black silk gloves hurriedly flipped through the yellow pages. Yes, a very romantic notion, she had said. Very sweet. Her husband, aloof of the bedroom door and staring with detached horror at the Oxford banner pinned to one wall, had hurriedly agreed that it was all very sweet, and very _sad_. Their daughter was no such comfort. She demanded to be shown the dollies, which she had heard hadn't any real use over there anymore. (The next day, they had very suspiciously left on holiday. Their maid apologized, with a very curiously sideways look, that they would not be able to attend the funeral.)

The book itself is not very thick- a meticulous count of one-hundred sheets, a total of two-hundred pages, and sweetly romantic handwriting filling an odd one-hundred and forty-nine pages. These one-hundred and forty-nine pages are weathered with coffee stains and tea stains and grass stains and some dark stains that smell metallic. The last page is a detailed diagram of a leg, more specifically, a knee, from a side, front, and backwards viewpoint. The tendons are outlined in red-pencil, the ligaments in purple, the muscles named with romantic, scribbling script, and a few ideas or thoughts starred in small paragraphs off to either side.

_For Ed_, the sloppy romantic says, and Susan hurries to close the book again.

On the _H.M.S Cailleach_, Susan decides not to put the book in storage with The Drawing. Instead, it sits in her suitcase at the side of her cot, catching her eye knowingly every time she enters the room. Cain and Thomas do not know that she has it, or that it was ever written. They are distinctly _not_ Narnian. It is only right that it stays with the one person who is anymore.

The three of them meet the captain on the night of their voyage. He is a younger man than Susan would have expected, but not so young that she cannot think well of him. He has a reddish beard that is full and well-groomed and a curling moustache that reminds her of Cpt. Edward John Smith, except that this young captain is a New-Yorker named Roy Armstrong.

Captain Armstrong invites them on that first night to a special dinner party with several of the ship's officers and a few other blue-bloods like Cain and Thomas. (Just because Cpt. Armstrong is young doesn't mean that he's naive.) It is technically not a formal affair, but Susan still manages to dress in a way that separates her completely from the other guests, that is to say, with inexpensive mourning. She stays beside Thomas for most of the evening because he is the best at brushing these things aside for the sake of other society, and only once is she asked a direct question.

("No, thank you," she says, and the waiter gives a little bow as he carries the champagne away.)

By the time the party has decided to retire, Susan's mind is spinning in restless circles around the uselessness of parties and the shallowness of society in general. Thomas bids her goodnight (he wants to interview the captain about the engines) so Cain is left to lead her to her room. The pair walk in surly, silent agreement for the entire way, and Cain works up the last of his politeness to ask her if she needs anything. Which she doesn't.

"Good then," he sighs, "Night."

"Goodnight."

And the suitcase with the handwritten book catches her eye again.

"_Meoow," _insists Wisp. The three-legged feline is sitting up, all haughty posture and lazy tail-curling from his spot on her bed. His sharp eyes look at her sardonically. He knows what she is thinking.

"Anything is more sensible than what I just sat through," she says, equally sardonic. Wisp blinks slowly, turning away from her, and she feels a little less heavy. Crossing the room and kicking off her heels to the wooden-planked walls, she kneels before the case and steels herself, fingers pinched under the latches, heart drumming at her throat.

_Click, _says the case. The hinges squeak slightly, revealing black fabric, and nestled on top rests a gleaming black hide of leather.

For a wild moment of adrenaline and aching hope, Susan can imagine that the skin is rising and falling in its nest, the back of some monster breathing peacefully in the middle of her mourning.

The moment passes, and she reaches in to lift the book out. It feels heavier than before. Dense. She weighs it, lays it down in her lap and strokes the spine, her soft hands feeling calluses of use. Dents and scratches and purposefully etchings of a pen or pencil across the cover. Something in a foreign tongue is written at the top, seen only in the glancing shadow of light as she tilts the book around at eye-level. It strikes her, suddenly, ravishingly, that she will never know what it means.

The book finds its way back into the stifling, air tight box, buried as deeply as she can manage. She spends the remainder of the night trying to remember even a single word of that language, sick in her heart that she cannot.

.NANONANONANO

"Seasick?" Thomas asks wincingly the next morning. He is refreshed, dressed lightly for the blaring warmth of the Atlantic under a cloudless sky, and takes the spot by her left elbow. Together, they lean over the upper railing, staring out across the fathomless sea. Susan is not seasick. The sea has nothing to do with it. As deep and powerful as the sea may be, it is nothing next to the sickening source of her discomfort. There is something deeper still, as she has been told.

She turns her head to him, smiling a little, "People-sick."

It has some merit. None of the guests in their class are as practical or genial as Susan would like. Two young ladies, maybe a year or so younger yet than Susan, have already passed by her. Their eyes were unnecessarily scathing, their noses unseeingly tilted away, their makeup nervously caked-on. Susan had laughed openly when she caught them looking, serving to fluster them terribly into briskly walking the opposite direction.

"Perhaps they thought I was a little wild to be on deck," she offers, once she tells Thomas about her encounter. After all, her hair is blowing around in tangled curls; her dress is the same from the previous night, wrinkled by much tossing and turning. She wears no face powder or nylon. Her shoes are resting, empty but for socks, beside her on the deck. Susan wriggles a toe or two to emphasize her wildness to Thomas, stopping when he openly and honestly laughs.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," he says, still grinning. "You know, the captain wants to invite you to dinner again. He feels that he was a terrible host last night."

Susan shakes her head, "He was no such thing and he knows it. _I _wasn't a proper guest."

Her friend sobers, dark eyes darting away. "I told him about your circumstances. Nothing in depth, of course. He says he's sorry for your loss."

Susan decides the sea is an over-glorified puddle and reaches down for her shoes.

"You can tell him that it's very kind of him to say so. I think I'll go back to my room and take a nap."

She brushes by him, walking quickly with shoes in hand, down the deck and around the corner. But this isn't far enough, and she realizes that she doesn't actually want to sleep or go anywhere near her room. She turns again, towards the stairwell, and pads lightly down them to the lower decks. The middle classes are dressed more similarly to her here, but the women are considerably more covered. Her bare feet are serving to draw eyes that are too polite to do anything but draw their mouths as well, straight back. Reined in. Susan feels very exposed here, but also as though the wrong parts are exposed- parts to be judged without being in-the-know. Impulsive and shallow.

She continues down into the dregs of the ship, feet thumping a little louder, a little faster, trembling her frame with the hardness of the ship against her.

The lower class is openly appreciative of her form, but she's moving too quickly for them to express their remarks fully. She catches sight of daughters, sons, husbands, wives, some lecherous and some honest. A few reach out their hands and offer her help, does she need help?

Susan squeezes around these offers, around the good and bad alike, still trapped and _why_ had she chosen a ship over an airplane?

She has no idea how deeply she has gone, but the only sound she can hear anymore is the low groaning of the ship's belly. No more stairs can lead her deeper, farther, and she realizes the heat of the hull is almost unbearable on her bare feet. She pauses long enough to slip her shoes on, socks in her pocket, and she carefully creeps around steaming boilers, avoiding the patches of sweaty, muscled men that are heaping coal and wiping their dripping brows on the hem of their undershirts. Down here, there is only heat, and groaning of metal, and sometimes the unearthly scream of steam from the thousands of pipes. It smells metallic down here. The yelling of the men to one another mixes in the haze until they are two, distinct, Narnian voices and one of them is sloppy romantic discussing a book he wants to write.

She settles against the back wall, curling her knees to her chest, and rests her head back as she listens to the words she never heard.

.NANONANONANO.

"_E says that the paste made with mint and sage works distinctly better than the mint and feverfew. Will compare effects when the verdict of L comes in..."_

Susan opens her eyes to a glaring bulb swinging above her head and the bed rocking nauseatingly beneath her. A single voice peirces her head, dangerous words carelessly bestowed.

"..._Rugby game at Kett. 1100 hours. Will take train instead of cab. L prefers the view of countryside to street... Hope E doesn't flatten the other team too badly..."_

It would be so easy to turn her head and see who was talking.

"..._the Creature is almost running. E wants to test more fuels before he settles on one. Fender needs to be refused. Tires need air. E needs a safer hobby..."_

She closes her eyes again and turns away from the voice. It pauses for a moment, replaced by a creaking, a shadow, and a warm hand dragging her blankets higher. Electric flesh brushes her jaw, leaving a spot barely bigger than a penny tingling with unknown energy.

"..._Must study for Botany exam. Photosynth. process still unclear. Prof. is a bit shady on details. Library is probably better use of resources... Also note: Call home to check on Susan..."_

Susan falls into dreams about her older brother's words in a friend's voice that both fill empty pages with overflowing, underappreciated love.

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><p><strong>AN 2: If it feels open-ended, you read it correctly. There's an entire Susan-Story to make up for it later. Happy New Year's Eve!**

**As Always,**

**-Tonzura123**


	3. Item Three: A ThreeLegged Kitten

**SAVE FOR THREE**

**By Tonzura123**

**Three: A Three-Legged Kitten**

**Disclaimer: Wisp is based off of a cat I once owned. The Pevensies are **_**not**_** based off of a cat I once owned. Patterns are discerned here.**

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><p><em>"He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy," Job 8:21<em>

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><p>It was raining on Edmund's face and he didn't appreciate it in the slightest.<p>

Of course, he could blame no one but himself for the whole fiasco. Hadn't he been the one to say, "University just isn't for me"? Rotten luck. Rotten luck for being so rotten at engineering.

Eighteen years old, graduated top of his class from Wilpshire Academy in Kettering, and with several offers for full rides at Oxford, Cambridge, King's College, and Harvard, Edmund Randall Pevensie had only then announced to his family that he did not intend to further his education. They had been, of course, shocked. Not one of them- especially Edmund's older brother, Peter, would have thought that a mind like his could just stop pursuing knowledge. But Edmund, as always, had decided to take the unexpected route.

"I have Things to do," Edmund had continued, as the dinner table gaped openly. "Things that I can't put off by going to school."

His father had come close to threatening him, their mother close to begging, and Susan had definitely tried bribing, but Peter and Lucy (who knew very well what sort of Things Edmund needed to do) had helped him.

And now it was raining on his face, in an alley in some God-forsaken part of London, at night, alone, without a leg to stand on.

Not too far away from where he lay, his precious Creature was shattered on its side. The motorized bicycle that Edmund had spent so much free time working on was in shambles. The headlights, barely attached by a wire, flickered light down the alley into the darkness. The back tire had rolled somewhere, the engine ticking like a sullen bomb as it cooled down from its overheating. The frame was complete twisted. It would take a Giant to pull it straight again. Edmund did not think he could find a Giant in England. There was nothing for it.

"You served your King well, you monstrous thing," Edmund told the broken bike, feeling the ripples in the puddle he lay in through his trousers. "And may you move on in peace."

The light flickered out and stayed that way. Edmund couldn't see his own hand in front of his face.

"Aslan's blessings, Creature."

"I can't see a blasted thing!" erupted a low voice from the darkness and Edmund lay very still and listened in the shadows of the low alley. The rubbish sacks and bins, littered so tightly around his body immediately calmed him- once oppressive, now a perfect hiding place. Edmund sent a silent thanks to Aslan, who always listened.

"He came this way, didn't he? On that stupid bike?"

"Yeah."

There were two distinct voices, both male. Edmund didn't trust either of them in the slightest. He had been following those voices for days. Vandals; nothing like Tanya Hennessey's string of robberies at the Walsburg Pub or Charlotte Dawson's little stunt with Lucy. They found houses, automobiles, and pets and ruined them. Edmund had drawn the line at the pets. Two cats drowned. One dog brutalized. It was enough, and Peter had completely backed him, just like always.

"Think he got lost?"

"Maybe. We should go. You know he jumped Calvin's lot in an alley once? And there was four of them. You do the math."

Ah, Calvin's lot. Edmund smiled. He remembered them very well.

"Calvin's lot isn't our lot. We're worth three a piece of those boys."

There were footsteps. Edmund had never quite realized how loudly he breathed. Then-

"Jeez! What was that?"

"What was what?"

"Something just crawled over my foot!"

"A rat, probably. Buck up."

There was a metallic clang, like the lid of a rubbish bin. Edmund tried to draw in his legs, but he couldn't really move and he wasn't sure he wanted to know if his paralysis was due to fear or something more permanent.

The second voice swore loudly, "There it is again! It just pulled on my shoestring!"

"Stop being such a baby, Howard- Argh! Did you see it?"

"See what? Stop messing around!"

"I'm _not_ messing around! It was effing huge! It just went behind that bin!"

A scuttling scrabble whispered through the alley. One of the voices squealed in a highly feminine manner, and Edmund had to restrain a startled laugh at the bizarre change of events.

"I have _never _seen a rat that big- It's monstrous, Howard!"

"Oh my god, John, it's looking right at us!"

"What's wrong with its eyes?"

"What' wrong with its _legs?"_

"It's gotta be diseased. Quick- let's get out of here before it scratches us or something!"

"All right you baby," said Howard, who sounded very relieved.

Their footsteps retreated. The scrabbling sound stilled. The rain made Edmund shiver.

And then something disturbingly warm jumped onto his chest.

Edmund's eyes shot open to match a pair of glowing green orbs. A long tail lashed in a flash of lightening, little paws gripping the front of his shirt with sharp and dirty claws.

"You are rather large," Edmund agreed. "And, if you'll forgive me, a little like a rat, being wet and all."

The large kitten perched on his chest let out a low, mournful yowl. Its fur was matted flat, its eyes frightfully big on its face, and when Edmund craned his eyes downward, he could tell that the poor wet thing was missing one leg. It kneaded his chest, bringing a little feeling back to the skin trapped under his soaked clothing, and purred so loudly that he could feel the vibrations in the very tips of his toes. Edmund let his head fall back into a rain-rippled puddle with a _splish_ and closed his eyes against the storm. Thunder shook the ground under him and the faint rumbling of the three-legged kitten hummed in his very lungs.

"At least they're gone," he muttered.

It was a small but rather nice compensation for his predicament. Definite injury and (quite possibly) murder were no longer Edmund's primary concerns.

"Wouldn't it be odd," he said breathlessly, trying to feel his arms or legs or move at all, "if I were to drown in a puddle that was only a centimeter or so deep?" He could barely hear his own voice, washed away by hushing sheets of wind and water and the tremble of electricity through the night sky. "I've always known I'd go in a way that was wet, you know. But hot-wet. Blood-wet. A sword fight or a rock slide or beheading or something terrifically gruesome. Not..."

Not in a cold puddle in an alley in some God-forsaken part of London, at night, alone, without a leg to stand on.

Edmund lie there and thought, lulled to a half-awake state by the continual purring of the kitten, and the massage of its big, soft paws against his heart.

"I guess it will be glorified over time," Edmund continued rationally. "I drowned in a sea of the blood of my enemies. I was subjected to Chinese water torture. I was kidnapped by Mermaids and am kept alive with magic in Atlantis, somewhere under the Bermuda Triangle."

(Edmund had always secretly wanted to sail through the Bermuda Triangle.)

"No matter," Edmund said, rousing himself as he forced his eyes to blink open. "My King will find me. He's daft, you know," he confided to the kitten, which purred and watched him with smiling eyes, "Thinks he has to be this perfect bloke. He's not. He shouldn't be. But he thinks he should, so he'll find me. In the nick of time, too." Edmund squinted; eyes adjusted enough so that he could make out the crippled form of Creature again. "He'll probably blubber."

(Peter would, most definitely, have interjected that he never _blubbered_- he simply expressed manly emotion in a medium that was a little saltier than others. Seeing that Peter's sodium intake had not lowered from his time at Hartbee's School for Young Men, this was hardly surprising.)

Edmund shivered. The kitten purred louder, and stood up, working its padded paws hard against Edmund's collarbone. Somehow, this helped a little.

"You're a brick," Edmund told the kitten, managing smile. "As noble as any Cat in Narnia."

The kitten meowed. It sounded like a knowing meow.

"When Peter gets here," Edmund swore, "I'm taking you home with me. I don't care if Mum throws a fit. I'm keeping you on, my good Cat. I'll dry you off and brush your fur and name you... something... and feed you until you're so fat you can't stand."

The kitten stopped purring and fixed a glowing eye on him.

"Fine," Edmund said, "I'll keep you trim. But for all your skeletal structure, that's really all you have, you know. You're a little wisp of a thing."

"Meooow," said the kitten. And it _smiled_.

Edmund, who was used to smiling Cats, did not initially react. Then he remembered where they were and marveled.

"You did just smile at me, right cat?" he asked. "I'm not off for the bin? I've my head on straight?"

"Meow." It smiled _again_. This time, it looked more mocking, and Edmund laughed aloud, uncaring who or what heard him in that alley or how much rain he inhaled with an open mouth.

"A Talking Cat here in England! However did it happen? I don't suppose you can form words in this world, can you my good Cat?"

The Cat shook its head. Edmund felt like laughing again, despite the rather tragic news.

"So sorry. Perhaps with some training... By Aslan, it's good to see you!"

The Cat's eyes squinted to hard with glee when Aslan was mentioned, they almost closed. It hopped off of Edmund's chest and began to wind his way under Edmund's chin, purring, rubbings, sticking his little cold nose against Edmund's neck. And Edmund could have sworn that he heard a soft and amused voice say, "_And you, my King._"

And that is the exact predicament that Peter (who had torn through the streets in the Old Bently and blubbered not at all during the drive) finally found them. He hastily parked the car where it stopped, leapt from the driver side into the heavy rain, and fell to his knees beside his brother. Fisting his hands in his coat, he shook Edmund a little, hoping to rouse him. Failing this, he checked over all the vitals- bloodflow, heartrate, and for breaks in any major bones, but particularly around the spine- and found his brother perfectly, lethargically fine.

If the rain falling on Edmund's face became a little saltier after that, there was no one but a stray cat to witness it.

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><p><strong>AN: Wisp will return in Susan's story, and it's possible that Creature will be resurrected. The subject of doors between worlds will be prominent in that tale, reaching back hundreds of years in both worlds.**

**Thanks to all who have read Save for Three! **

**As Always,**

**-Tonzura123**


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